The HPE StoreVirtual 3000 Storage series brings enterprise capabilities to entry storage customers with an advanced, multi-controller architecture designed with simplicity and flexibility in mind for a low starting cost. A highly virtualized backend and a single storage capacity pool deliver superior efficiency. Flexibly and non-disruptively add flash performance, file management, remote replication, and additional capacity to keep pace with changing business needs. A single screen lets you manage multiple platforms via an intuitive GUI with the same look and feel shared with HPE ProLiant servers. Plug-ins for VMware and Hyper-V let you manage the storage behind your server virtualization deployment from within your existing management tools. An affordable, granular, building-block approach lets you invest in a low-cost, entry-level unit that is ready to scale when you are, providing investment protection that helps you get off of the disposable technology treadmill.

Technical Specifications

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Rated 4 out of 5 by Philip Sellers from I like that it runs on ProLiant on top of our ESX servers.Valuable Features:We were primarily looking for a storage system for a management cluster that was separate from our fiber channel SAN. Fiber channel SAN is all of our mission critical stuff, but we needed somewhere for our management systems that are watching and monitoring everything. So we were looking for something that was ASCII based. We wanted something that wasn't going to take pre-built hardware because we have two different data centers and a third location where we are trying to spread the data across those locations. The VSA solution was great because it runs on ProLiant alongside of our ESX servers and we were able to get that geographic disbursement of our data while watching our mission critical fiber stuff. It's simple to administer too and it was simple to set up.Improvements to My Organization:We leveraged StoreVirtual to provide a software SAN for our management cluster of vSphere - this allowed us to run monitoring and management applications on a separate infrastructure from the rest of our Fibre Channel based vSphere clusters and allowed us to watch and observe, even when the SAN was having a problem.Room for Improvement:The user interface needs to be updated. It's getting kind of long in the tooth, and the user interface makes it look a lot more complex than it actually is to manage, and I think that you can mask a lot of that with a refresh of the user interface. While HPE has created a new HTML5 UI for the HyperConverged 380, it is not available to the rest of the StoreVirtual population.Use of Solution:We've got about four years worth of experience with it.Deployment Issues:Sizing information is scarce to know how to size drives and which types of drives to use. Different engineers in HPE have different opinions how to deploy the solution. Using VMDK disks under the StoreVirtual for its primary storage caused a lot of low disk space errors in vSphere on the VMFS drives, so either you leave a lot of space unused to avoid errors or you deploy it onto RDM's with local disks (which takes some extra configuration).Stability Issues:StoreVirtual has been great. We haven't had a failure in all the years I have run it, and we went through a reconfiguration about three months ago to add some solid state drives to improve the performance, and it works fantastic.Scalability Issues:The great thing about that is if we are hitting a performance issue or something, scale is built into that platform, you add additional nodes, you've got additional capacity, you've got additional IOP capabilities across your virtual array. So scaling within StoreVirtual is really kind of easy, just scale it out to another node. The trick, however, is each node really needs to be configured the same as the last - so mix and match in the future with new technology becomes more of an issue.Initial Setup:StoreVirtual setup is actually really simple. There are a couple of different ways that you can do it now. You can set it up from intelligent provisioning, which is included on every Proliant server. It will go out to the internet, pull down the bits, and deploy it for you. It's all sort of work-flowed and really simple. If you wanted to, you could pull down the bits yourself and there is a wizard that deploys it. That's also really simple. You have to do a little bit of planning of how you build your rate sets and drive sets and stuff that are going to be underneath it, but it's incredibly easy to deploy, whether you are doing bare metal, or BSA like we are doing.Cost and Licensing Advice:Pricing is very affordable - it is great for SMB on up to Enterprise looking for branch solutions. Purpose built-appliances are also available for those looking for more scale.Other Advice:StoreVirtual isn't going to be a jack-rabbit - it isn't going to be the best performing SDS you find on the market, but it is most the most affordable and it suits many use cases.Disclaimer: IT Central Station contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.

Date published: 2017-07-11

Rated 4 out of 5 by Brady Wilson from Offers a high end storage solution that I can present to my customers.Valuable Features:I guess on the top of the list is certainly ease of use. We're a smaller company, and we don't have a lot of engineers who can dedicate their time to a single product. I guess I'd also say reliability. I need something that just kind of works all the time. I don't have the time to be dedicating resources to fixing things.Improvements to My Organization:It offers, while still affordable, a really high end storage solution that I can present to my customers.Room for Improvement:For this particular product, I was talking to one of their storage people about it. They already added the few things that I needed. So I don't have anything major. But it would nice to have deduplication or compression, things that you have in some of the higher end products.Stability Issues:Stability is excellent.Scalability Issues:Scalability is good, as well. We are certainly going to push the upper bounds of what it can do.Technical Support:We have used technical support and it has been great. It is quick to get access to their support engineers, but also they solve every problem.Previous Solutions:This is actually what we selected when we started this search. When selecting a vendor, cost is there, of course, but more than that, some of the other things I've mentioned: Ease of use, reliability, and support. The relationship goes a long way, too. Having access to people directly, whether that's sales engineers, or the sales team themselves. We are a small company, so getting attention from a big company like HPE is great. We probably wouldn't get that from other companies.Initial Setup:The initial setup was very straightforward. It was very simple.Other Solutions Considered:We started using this before HPE purchased it. It was LeftHand Network before. It was them versus HPE's SAN, so technically HPE was the other vendor. Now HPE owns it. We chose this solution because it was cluster storage, so for us and our size, it was a better product line.Other Advice:I would say with this particular solution, you're getting a lot when it comes in price point. You're getting a lot of features compared to some of the other products out there.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.

Date published: 2017-06-26

Rated 4 out of 5 by Konstantinos from The network RAID feature provides maximum availability.Valuable Features:The network RAID feature gives us maximum availability, since we cannot afford any downtime, even for a second. We need our systems continuously up.Improvements to My Organization:It gives us what we want. It provides stability and availability. It is a very reliable solution.Room for Improvement:The next release is already out and I found that the many of the improvements that we were thinking about in the product such as the dual controller, are already implemented.The penalty for the availability is performance. So, you have to balance or choose between the availability and the performance. We chose availability, but it would have an impact in the performance.Stability Issues:Now, we're not afraid of anything that goes wrong.Scalability Issues:We didn't have any problems. We scaled up a few years ago; the system was just fine.Technical Support:We have used the technical support only for faulty replacements such as replacement of disks, for example. The contract was for the next business day. It was fine.Previous Solutions:We were not using any other solution previously. Our partner suggested this product; we saw that it fits our needs and tried it out. We were quite pleased with the result and decided to invest in this solution.Initial Setup:I was involved in the setup process. It was easy.Other Advice:If this solution fits your needs and also if your environment is similar to ours, then we would suggest this solution.The factors that we look at while selecting a vendor are that they should be innovative, provide a good support option and have reliable products. I don't want my product to fail.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.

Date published: 2017-03-23

Rated 4 out of 5 by Edward Haletky from Two StoreVirtual VSAs provide redundancy and resilience, 3 would be better.Valuable Features:The HPE StoreVirtual Network RAID-10 (mirroring between nodes) is the most valuable feature. This allows for multi-node redundancy. If one node fails, the other in the cluster picks up the entire load. I have had nodes fail due to upgrade and other issues with no loss of data. Resync is automatic as is failover. For a 3 node system you do need an independent failover manager, but that is normal for clusters.Improvements to My Organization:I administer a 100% virtual environment. To use the HPE StoreVirtual VSA edition, I did not have to buy an expensive external array. I was able to create two 3.27TB usable HPE VSAs from all the older disks I had laying around. Granted, eventually, I did purchase two storage blades to be used by the VSA, but that is not how usage started. Recently, I have been using HPE StoreVirtual on KVM as well.Room for Improvement:The management console upgrade needs a bit of work. In some cases, it will not upgrade due to the non-removal of other HPE StoreVirtual Components. Be sure to remove other components first. The other issue is a login issue. There is a built-in timeout and once that timeout hits, the only way to log back in is to kill the management console. That bit me hard during an upgrade and I had to reinstall one of my nodes. There is a replay or login cache that is not working properly and should be settable by the administrator and disabled during upgrades. Sometimes upgrades can take a while.Use of Solution:Since version 8.5 or 3+ years. I have gone through many upgrades and am now at the latest.Stability Issues:HPE StoreVirtual is quite stable, except for the login issues, but only if you have at least 2 nodes. Built-in redundancy for Network RAID-10 mode is very stable.Scalability Issues:My environment grows with me; I can expand it up to 10 TBs before I have to re-license. In addition, it is possible to build an all flash version of HPE StoreVirtual. One of these days, I look forward to doing just that.Technical Support:When I have a problem, I will call support; I've called support once. It was really not a StoreVirtual problem as much as it was a management console problem, and they solved it fairly quickly.Previous Solutions:Actually, at the time of my initial use, I did try building my own iSCSI server (I still have that running actually) but HPE StoreVirtual has many more features and works for me. Today, I also have VMware VSAN, HPE StoreVirtual, and even a fibre channel array. I have had a fibre channel infrastructure for well over 12 years. I needed an iSCSI environment as well. This was the best option at the time and today is a core part of my virtual environment.Initial Setup:Initial setup is fairly straightforward. You get a bunch of disks, put it into your system, present it as a virtual disk, install your VSA, done. You want redundancy of two nodes, install another and tie them together, after installing the fail over manager virtual machine as well. Instant three node cluster. It self discovers all components as well. My most complex thing was actually making sure it was secure. That involves adding more firewall, split networking, and pull it into hypervisor management for VAAI and so on. That took a little bit of effort, but it is not overwhelming.I bought one one year and the second the next year. I’m a typical small enterprise, where I plan all my expenses very carefully. Until I had both of them, I didn't put anything mission critical on it.Cost and Licensing Advice:Be sure to get 2-nodes for redundancy. Licensing changes at the 10TB mark.Other Solutions Considered:I run a 100% vSphere environment, and KVM. I actually built my own iSCSI server that was for ESXi and I used it to upgrade all my SANs. I have a SAN, as well - a fibre channel SAN - and when I upgrade that, I've upgraded it three times; it's a rip and replace, and the other one was rip and replace all the drives. I just moved everything to my local iSCSI server, but that was unstable.Other Advice:The management console could be a lot better, as it's got a little clunky feeling. It needs a lot of work on some parts of it, and on the integration with the components that I need inside of the vSphere environment and the KVM environment. It's there, but it's a little antiquated. There are some things coming out that I heard about at HPE Discover that will make my life a lot easier. I'm likely going to upgrade some of it in pieces again, so I don't lose my redundancy.Check it out. The redundancy is there. The real thing is to make sure you know what you're buying. If you buy any VSA by any company out there, it's tied to a single piece of hardware. Now, you can move it around by doing storage vMotion, but if you have 3 TB, then you need 3 TB free somewhere else. That doesn't move fast, so the idea is to do redundancy and to build that in. To bake that in and build that into your costing model and to plan that. Either do it upfront or plan to do it eventually. That means a minimum of 2 nodes plus a fail over manager.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.

Date published: 2016-12-16

Rated 4 out of 5 by Allan Erickson from I like the fact that it's taken us from approximately 23 servers down to three ProLiant servers.Valuable Features:Flexibility, it can spin up new server to meet business needs at will. I don't have to worry about buying a new box, provisioning it, all the issues that go along with that. I like the fact that it's taken us from approximately 23 servers down to three ProLiant servers running the StoreVirtual VSA. We have had a big reduction in our electricity consumption, the cooling requirements for our server room dropped dramatically and the reliability has been fantastic with it.Ease of management, as I come from a software background, and I'm responsible for IT overall. I can get in there and turn some nuts and bolts and make things happen without any trouble and they've done a really nice job putting that all together. I'm very happy with it overall.Improvements to My Organization:The flexibility, scalability, reliability, and all the various abilities. Those are really the key elements to it.Room for Improvement:It could be cheaper, everything could be cheaper.Stability Issues:Excellent, I can't think of one instance where we've had downtime. It's been just outstanding all around.Scalability Issues:We've had to add virtual machines to fulfill different server needs. Other than that we haven't had to do much since we implemented last summer. Last July is when we went live with this solution. That would be the key thing that we've been able to do with it.Technical Support:I've only contacted them once when we had an issue. It was our issue, as the managers of the system, we had a space provisioning issue that we had to reach out to HPE to get assistance with. I wasn't actually on the phone with them. Our vendor, who provided this system, was interacting with HPE support but as far as I know it went very well.Previous Solutions:We had two eight foot tall racks stuffed full of servers that were connected together in various ways.Implementation Team:I was in charge of hiring the people that did the setup. We had an outside vendor come in and do the installation for us and the setup seemed to go extremely smoothly. Probably out of the 23 bare metal boxes we virtualized 18 of them or something, 16 or 18 of them and that all went exactly as expected. Very few hiccups during that project.Other Advice:For us, once our vendor explained this option we knew it was right for what we wanted to do. We're a marketing company and we need to change and react quickly and respond to business ideas very quickly. This virtual environment really is responsive to that. I don't see a downside to it from anybody else's point of view. I would recommend it to just about anybody who was considering it.Our biggest considerations were how big we were going to go with it so we would end up with three ProLiants, but we need four. What's the storage capacity? What percentage of it is SSD as opposed to hard disks and those kinds of things. That is, for us, where we really had to scratch our heads and think very carefully about that to get the most out of our dollar for that and then how we would budget in the future. When you're putting it together, if you're on a tight budget, we're a small company so we had a pretty tight budget, we were able to do it in such a way to provision it pretty lightly, without a lot of headroom, knowing that in the future the scalability and flexibility of the system will really allow you to add and expand later with very little pain.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.

Date published: 2016-11-24

Rated 4 out of 5 by Mehmet Emin from The VSA (virtual appliance) version enables us to reuse already installed hardware.Valuable Features:Easy and cheap High Availability is most valuable for us. Also, the VSA (virtual appliance) version enables us to reuse already installed hardware. You do not need to worry about RAID and components anymore, because even a whole chassis loss does not stop this product.Improvements to My Organization:We are able to build server clusters without external storage and still provide high availability. We are able to run the VSA version inside the actual servers, thus converging server and storage in same units.Room for Improvement:The new Quorum Witness function is promising for easier deployment but needs better reliability.Use of Solution:We have been using StoreVirtual solutions since 2010 when it was known as LeftHand.Deployment Issues:We have had no issues with the deployment.Stability Issues:We have had no issues with the stability.Scalability Issues:We have had no issues scaling it.Customer Service:Customer service is outstanding.Technical Support:Technical support is excellent.Previous Solutions:We have used many monolithic and traditional storage systems and all proved to not be highly available with single units. However, StoreVirtual can be split into two, providing you the benefit of redundant active data centers without doubling the cost.Initial Setup:Initial setup is easy, but the differences from traditional storage requires some learning curve. You need to know about managers concept of StoreVirtual. Fortunately newer versions of centralized management console (CMC) provides warnings when you have configurations that would result in reduced availability.Implementation Team:HPE Installation Services are recommended. Since we are an integrator, we provide this.ROI:ROI usually takes about a year.Cost and Licensing Advice:If you think about high availability the product is very cheap because it is an all inclusive offering. You need to buy licenses and two of traditional products compared to StoreVirtual.The VSA version is free for every brand server up to 1TB/node up to three nodes. There is also a 60 day trial for more than 1TB storage. You just need the license key to continue managing the product without reinstalling if you purchase it.Other Advice:It is the only product that provides High Availability without depending on OS multipath I/O. It looks like a single unit from the outside, thus there is no need for failover/failback because all nodes are active. It is like a metro train compared to a classic diesel train, meaning it has an engine in every car. Adding capacity means adding performance because you are adding controllers, too. We can’t say it is the fastest product on the planet, but it is definitely not slow. High Availability means synchronized replication over the network, adding a little latency but providing High Availability.Since it is IP-based, it is important to make sure a network problem does not result in the collapse of storage network. It is best to have redundant switches that do not share the same network as applications. VLANS are definitely recommended.Pay attention to the managers running and make sure your failover manager is not bound to any nodes. A failover manager needs to be alive for smaller clusters to survive complete hardware/network failures. Make sure there is no single point of failure that would result in multiple nodes going down.Disclaimer: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer:We are an HP Gold Partner. We also integrate and provide maintenance for StoreVirtual products.

Date published: 2016-08-16

Rated 4 out of 5 by Philip Sellers from I like that it runs on ProLiant on top of our ESX servers.Valuable Features:We were primarily looking for a storage system for a management cluster that was separate from our fiber channel SAN. Fiber channel SAN is all of our mission critical stuff, but we needed somewhere for our management systems that are watching and monitoring everything. So we were looking for something that was ASCII based. We wanted something that wasn't going to take pre-built hardware because we have two different data centers and a third location where we are trying to spread the data across those locations. The VSA solution was great because it runs on ProLiant alongside of our ESX servers and we were able to get that geographic disbursement of our data while watching our mission critical fiber stuff. It's simple to administer too and it was simple to set up.Room for Improvement:I'd like to see the user interface updated. It's getting kind of long in the tooth, and the user interface makes it look a lot more complex than it actually is to manage, and I think that you can mask a lot of that with a refresh of the user interface. Kind of the same thing that they did with the 3PAR. They upgraded the user interface to an HTML5 application, and to me it makes it a lot easier, simpler to manage, and they could do the same thing for store virtual.Use of Solution:We've got about two years worth of experience with it.Stability Issues:StoreVirtual has been great. We haven't had a failure in two years, and we went through a reconfiguration about three months ago to add some solid state drives to improve the performance, and it works.Scalability Issues:The great thing about that is if we are hitting a performance issue or something, scale is built into that platform, you add additional nodes, you've got additional capacity, you've got additional IOP capabilities across your virtual array. So scaling within StoreVirtual is really kind of easy, just scale it out to another node.Initial Setup:StoreVirtual setup is actually really simple. There are a couple of different ways that you can do it now. You can set it up from intelligent provisioning, which is included on every Proliant server. It will go out to the internet, pull down the bits, and deploy it for you. It's all sort of work-flowed and really simple. If you wanted to, you could pull down the bits yourself and there is a wizard that deploys it. That's also really simple. You have to do a little bit of planning of how you build your rate sets and drive sets and stuff that are going to be underneath it, but it's incredibly easy to deploy, whether you are doing bare metal, or BSA like we are doing.Other Advice:I'd like to see the UI of the Central Management Console updated. It really is pretty simple to deploy, but the older UI makes it look more complicated than it really is. HPE has purpose built solutions utilizing StoreVirtual in its Hyper-Converged and Converged Systems that do a really good job of easily deploying it. Getting that same experience to a user just ordering StoreVirtual would be really nice to have.Disclaimer: IT Central Station contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.

Date published: 2016-07-05

Rated 4 out of 5 by Bryan Seminara from Using this platform, we were able to provide virtual desktops (VDI) to our end users across WAN, to help alleviate some of the problems that we’ve had with bandwidth.Valuable Features:* Hardware stability* Support* Four-hour response support* PerformanceImprovements to My Organization:Using this platform, we were able to provide virtual desktops (VDI) to our end users across WAN, to help alleviate some of the problems that we’ve had with bandwidth.Room for Improvement:We are experiencing some latency that we’re resolving with HP.Use of Solution:The product has been in place for four months.Deployment Issues:No issues with deployment.Stability Issues:No, the hardware has been good, and the system runs at a pretty low-temperature. We have ordered additional RAM as we need more.Scalability Issues:Not yet. We haven’t made that jump yet, but in a few months we may add additional nodes. It seems simple enough to add additional nodes.Customer Service:10/10.Technical Support:10/10. They have experienced technical staff and work through the problems. They're very helpful.Previous Solutions:This was our first HyperConverged solution.Initial Setup:It was a very smooth setup. We were given a small check-list, we prepared, and then HP came in, set it up, and trained us.Implementation Team:HP came on-site to help set up and train. They were hands on, and the training was good, as the interface is easy enough to be very understandable. The training we had is enough for us to scale out and add additional nodes in the future on our own.ROI:It takes about two years.Cost and Licensing Advice:The initial install cost is expensive, but eventually the cost per user is quite reasonable. The more you scale out, the faster it drops. The original cost per user was $971 for 500 users. The cost goes down to $594, and after 3,000 users, it goes down to $401.Other Solutions Considered:Three of the four solutions we researched were HyperConverged solutions, and there wasn’t the same support and cost as we had from HP. HP was the best for cost savings per performance, year over year. We looked at three other solutions though for our RFP, and we selected HP. We evaluated the cost per user once you scale out.Other Advice:On the software side of things, we’ve had issues with printers. We have a complicated situation on the user side of things too. We were able to get through the issues and limitations by using PowerShell scripting. Having IT resources in-house is a must for more complicated cases.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.